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Making Time to Care, and Caring for Time: ‘Tricking Time’ to Cope with Conflicting Temporalities in a Child Protection Agency

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Abstract

Care—concern for and attending to the needs of the particular other we take responsibility—requires enacting time in a way that clashes with the industrial ‘clock time’ dominating our lives. Ethicists of care have highlighted the tensions between the temporalities involved in caring as a situated, relational and processual practice and the organization of care work according to standardized clock time. Yet, the practice of care work within bureaucratic work organizations seems to reconcile temporal demands of care and clock time. In this article, we build on Barbara Adam’s concept of ‘timescape’ (Adam, Timewatch: The social analysis of time, Polity, 1995; Adam, Time, Polity, 2004) to inquire how care workers juggle apparently conflicting temporalities. Through a participant observation study of a child protection agency in France, we discover that care workers ‘trick’ time by carving out care timescapes that resist the clock—time as continuous, non-standardized, and in the present moment—while utilizing the structure of clock time in the form of ‘scheduling work’ to negotiate for and safeguard the process time they needed to ensure the provision of appropriate, ethical care. Confirming the centrality of time to ethical practices in organizations, our study further evidences and elucidates the intricate relations between clock time and process time in the ethical practice of care.

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No, there is no such thing as it would compromise the anonymity of the participants.

Notes

  1. The term ‘situation’ is used to designate the case of a child in the care of SERV, reproducing here the very words of SERV workers, since situation in French translates as ‘situation’ in English.

  2. All names have been changed to protect the identity of participants.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Gilles (pseudonym), whose work was an endless source of inspiration for us. We are indebted to the participants of the study who generously shared their (clock) time and insights with us. We also would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who engaged wholeheartedly with our work.

Funding

This study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble, France

    Anne Antoni

  2. Saïd Business School, Oxford, UK

    Juliane Reinecke

  3. Warwick Business School, Coventry, UK

    Marianna Fotaki

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  1. Anne Antoni
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Correspondence to Anne Antoni.

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The authors have identified no conflict of interests. This research has been found compliant with the research ethics policy of Warwick Business School. The participants were informed of the research purpose of the study and consented to participate.

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Antoni, A., Reinecke, J. & Fotaki, M. Making Time to Care, and Caring for Time: ‘Tricking Time’ to Cope with Conflicting Temporalities in a Child Protection Agency. J Bus Ethics 188, 645–663 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05507-9

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